A scene from the Pixar movie "Up".
The 10 feature films produced to date by Pixar Animation Studios -- including "Toy Story," "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles" and now "Up," to name just four -- are smarter, more inventive and, in general, superior to the computer-generated cartoons produced by the company's rivals.
Fans probably feel they can recognize a Pixar film from the ambitiousness of its design and the sophistication of its storytelling, just as aficionados of old movies may recognize a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer melodrama from its luminous photography and its glamorous stars, or a Warner Bros. gangster yarn from its tough talk and its down-and-dirty subject matter.
Jonas Rivera, producer, and Peter Docter, director, of the Pixar movie "Up".
But the Pixar style isn't cookie-cutter. The directors within the studio have distinctive visions, interests and teams of collaborators, and it's possible a student of the 10 Pixar features released to date can distinguish between them, the way a fan of old Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons can identify the work of Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson and Chuck Jones.
Three years in the making, the new Pixar film, "Up," an odd but moving adventure about an old man (voiced by Ed Asner) who escapes the pressures of the noisy modern world by hoisting his house into the sky with helium balloons, was directed by Pete Docter (director of "Monsters Inc."), with scriptwriter Bob Peterson credited as co-director.
The producer was Jonas Rivera, filling that role for the first time after a career at Pixar that began with the company's first film, "Toy Story," in 1995.
A week before his film's release, Rivera, 38, was happy to chat up "Up."
Q: The movies produced by Pixar have been box-office blockbusters, yet lately the movies have had odd heroes and themes that aren't necessarily commercial. "Ratatouille" was about a rat, "WALL-E" was set on a deserted Earth, destroyed by pollution... Is the tension between commercial expectations and artistic vision distracting or inspiring?
A: Do we look at ourselves as auteurs or populists? It's somewhere in the middle.
Pixar is a director-driven studio, and the job of the producer is to protect the integrity of the project, to make sure the director's vision gets to the screen. This is a long, slow process in animation -- we began "Up" three years ago, with a huge team of 300 people, and what not.
But we think of ourselves as filmmakers, not necessarily anything else, and that goes for everyone on the crew and the company, from the production assistant to the lighting director the head or security, whatever -- everything we do is about making these films. As much as we love animation, we think of (our releases) as films first, and they happen to be animated.
Q: Much of the opening sequence in "Up" is an almost silent montage that depicts the passage of time, as Carl, the lead character, and his wife, Ellie, grow old together, until Ellie's death leaves Carl alone. It's such an economical way of delivering the information, although kids may not understand exactly what's happening. A little kid sitting behind me asked about Carl, "Why is he so sad?"
A: Originally, that was written as almost like 20 minutes of the movie, but it kept getting shorter and shorter and, you're right, we tried to be as economical as possible. Because the story is really about what happens after that, but we have the set-up in Carl's house so when the rest of the adventure takes place there, the humor will be funnier and the dramatic action will mean more.
We talked about that, you know -- if you know somebody, if it's your family or friends, and you hear that something happens to them, good or bad, you feel that it means more. If you don't know them, it's just news. We wanted the audience to know Carl.
We wanted the opening to be like a memory, a nostalgic memory.
Q: As a producer, do you contribute ideas to the film?
A: I do, but on the sidelines. One thing I've learned as a producer and working in production at Pixar: These guys are good. I just need to kind of stay out of their way at times.
I'm often like their conscience, in some way. Like, they'll riff something and put it in the movie, and I'll just have to seriously tell them, this doesn't work, and this is why... I channel the audience for them.
Q: How did you get to be a producer on "Up"?
A: I've worked with Pete for years, and he and I share a passion for animation and filmmaking, and we speak the same language in our tastes, and we're in the movie business for the same reason. We grew up on the same films, and we just struck up a great friendship and collaboration.
And the studio, I've been working there for 15 years. I was the first intern; I worked on "Toy Story" -- just literally, right place right time. I got in there early. I know John Lasseter really well, I production-managered "Cars" for him, I kind of established a relationship with the creative braintrust where they decided to take a chance and let me be in charge of everything.
Q: The movie is filled with references to movie and pulp entertainment of the past...
A: It's sort of like what's old is new again. We reference so much stuff. We watched "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and thought about Captain Nemo while developing Muntz's character (Muntz is the film's villain). Anything from Colonel Kurtz (in "Apocalypse Now") to Captain Nemo to "The Aviator," all those things were influences.
(So was) Mt. Roraima, the real mountain down there in Venezuela, in the Tepuis, that was what inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write "The Lost World," the idea being that these are some of the oldest rock formations on the Earth, many of them are unclimbable, and if there were dinosaurs alive today, that's where they'd be. So the place was just right for us.
One, it's shrouded in mystery, so it's really a lost world. Two, it's almost like a visual metaphor for Carl, a character who's literally boxed in his house and isolated himself away -- he's detached from the world, right, and these mountains are detached from the world. They're literally on another plane, and they're lost -- as is Carl.
Q: The story becomes so wild and unpredictable, it's like an old Uncle Scrooge comic-book adventure by Carl Barks. You'd think they'd encounter dinosaurs, but the "creatures" are these ridiculous birds...
A: With this one, Pete and I wanted to make an old-type Disney movie. We referenced "Bambi" and "Dumbo" and "Sleeping Beauty" as much as anything else in that those just had a certain charm and a cadence to them. We wanted the movie to be fun, and fun for kids. That's what our goal was, somehow to find a cross between Frank Capra, Walt Disney and Miyazaki (Hayao Miyazaki, creator of "Spirited Away").
Q: The character design is cartoonish and stylized.
A:: The computer graphics used in these films tends to make things look realistic, things can look photo-real. "WALL-E," for example -- the production design was reverse-engineered out of the fact that footage from "Hello, Dolly!" is in it. There's footage from a real movie with real people, so they wanted "WALL-E" to look real. But we had a movie about a house that floats in the air with thousands of balloons on it. So we decided we needed a certain amount of whimsy and caricature to support that. So Carl is three heads high, and he's very much a square, with square glasses. He sort of looks like a house, in a way. The caricatured look of this world -- we really want to push shape language, we really wanted to push the color palette, to be bolder.
We were more inspired by the graphic design paintings of Mary Blair (who produced concept art for Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan") than by any photo references.
Q: What is your hope for "Up"?
A: It's really almost surreal to be done with it, and talking about it, because it takes so long to do, but I'm really proud of it. I can't wait for people to see it, and I hope they enjoy it. We feel a little bit like we're sending our kid out into the world.
Q: Speaking of kids, can you claim any of the "production babies" listed in the end credits? (It's become a tradition to list the names of all the babies born to crew members during years-long production of a Pixar movie.)
A: Ava, my daughter, is a production baby in the credits. My other daughter is in "Cars."
-- John Beifuss: 529-2394
- |
Comments » 0
Be the first to post a comment!
Share your thoughts
Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.